My diary about my life as a writer with a day job, entrepreneur, reader, health enthusiast, and runner; random thoughts, new discoveries and whatever else that keeps me in the throes of everlasting procrastination.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

I'm starting to get excited now. Six more weeks of school and I will have all my classes completed for my Master's Degree. So much has been on hold since I started school last September. I've been taking one class at a time, but the semester long class is squeezed into six weeks. Plus I'm trying to study periodically for a quality certification and a project management certification. When I started back, I tried to balace everything: work, school, writing, working out, and me time. But after awhile, things started dropping off. First the me time. Gym went from 5 - 6 days a week to 1 -2 on the weekends. Work hours got longer after three rounds of layoffs. I'd come home from work with about an hour and a half of study time, then prep for work the next day, then sleep. Weekends are filled with writing a weekly paper or doing a weekly assignment, plus all the errands of life (groceries, laundry, cleaning, etc.).

Writing was sporadic until it fell off. I tried to keep in touch with the creative side by listening to audiobooks whenever I got into the car. Everything else with writing has fallen by the wayside. No time for blogging. Website is down; no time to maintain one or to put information together. Newsletter writing and book promotion...gone. The writing life is a very busy life. Writing is the easy part. But whether you self-publish or you're traditionally published, there's a lot of work in promotion and maintenance. It's a full-time job within itself. Something that writers know, and most others don't realize. There's a lot of time and work that goes into trying to be a successful author.

One thing that most authors need is a day job. My day job helped me to publish my first book. I'm considering the time I've spent working on my MBA as an investment in my day job to further advance my writing career. And now, six more weeks to go and I'm getting pumped because I can get back to the writing life. I'm not actually even thinking about graduation or anything. My thoughts are on finally having my time freed up to concentrate on writing again. August 17th is the last day of class. August 18th, I start reviewing the first draft of my third book. Can't wait.

Hey Cherlyn, I have my PMP and on the management team for the Women in Project Management (WiPM) Special Interest Group (SIG) with PMI. We are going to start our last eStudy group in August. If you want more details, let me know. I went through the program myself in 2007 and can only give the eStudy group praise.

Hey thanks! The last? I finish school August 17th and definitely want to start any other program after that. I haven't fully considered how I will proceed but I will check out eStudy. I plan to look closely next month. Thanks!

Cherlyn

About Cherlyn

Cherlyn Michaels is the author of Counting Raindrops Through a Stained Glass Window (Hyperion Books, 2005) and First Fridays (Hyperion Books, 2007). Cherlyn resides in Georgia where she works as an Engineer. She is currently working on her third novel and other writing projects.